Backup from cli with custom output directory won't work

Hi,

I am trying to create a backup with the command line interface over ssh. I am using ssh for it since it allows to choose the output directory for the backup.

I have a 50 GB disk aside my YunoHost installation on VPS SSD (ovh) and have mounted the 50 GB drive properly.

However, when I do:

sudo yunohost backup create --output-directory /path/to/a/backup/folder/on/my/50GB/disk

I end up with the error:

Error: Not enough free disk space on '/path/to/a/backup/folder/on/my/50GB/disk'

The thing is that the YunoHost installation is on a 20 GB disk while I am trying to back it up on a 50 GB empty disk, so there should not be any disk space issue (am I right?).

Any idea?

Best regards and thank you for the amazing work and community.

Can you write a file on ā€˜/path/to/a/backup/folder/on/my/50GB/diskā€™ (it will exclude a permission problem)
Can you verifiy with ā€œdf -hā€ command that thereā€™s enough space.

You can also try this trick : by defaut yunohost do a backup in /home/yunohost.backup/archives
You can do a symbolic link from /home/yunohost.backup/archives to /path/to/a/backup/folder/on/my/50GB/disk

in order to do this,
sudo ln -s /home/yunohost.backup/archives /path/to/a/backup/folder/on/my/50GB/disk

Only do this command if you understand it

If after this, sudo yunohost backup create works, it means that thereā€™s a bug :slight_smile:

Thanks for the answer.

I can write on the targetted device, as I have put the same permissions as /home/yunohost.backup/archives for root.

Plus, here is the output of df -h:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/vda1 20G 15G 4,2G 79% / udev 10M 0 10M 0% /dev tmpfs 774M 73M 702M 10% /run tmpfs 1,9G 176K 1,9G 1% /dev/shm tmpfs 5,0M 0 5,0M 0% /run/lock tmpfs 1,9G 0 1,9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup /dev/vdb1 50G 1,5G 46G 4% /mnt/vdb tmpfs 387M 0 387M 0% /run/user/1001
There are 46 GB available on /dev/vdb1 mounted on /mnt/vdb, while my YunoHost install is made on /dev/vda1 mounted on /.

I tried yout trick, that I understand, and indeed I get the following:
Warning: App 'phpmyadmin' will not be saved Warning: App 'wallabag2' will not be saved Error: Unable to back up the app 'kanboard' Warning: 18330+5 records in Warning: 18331+1 records out Warning: 9385943 bytes (9,4 MB) copied, 0,263293 s, 35,6 MB/s Error: Not enough free disk space on '/home/yunohost.backup/archives'

So, from what I understand here: there is no bug and the backup needs more than 46 GB of free disk space?

OK. The backup doesnā€™t need enough space because itā€™s copy some /etc configuration files and data from /home/yunohost.apps. The Warning and Error in the log, Iā€™ve the same too (some apps are not backupable with yunohost backup).

What I donā€™t understand yet is the ā€œError: Not enough free disk space on '/home/yunohost.backup/archivesā€ because itā€™s start to copy some files.

Can you chech what contains /home/yunohost.backup/archives? I expect thereā€™s a tmp folder/directory and a 201615-XXYYZZ.info.json file (the log file).

the backup needs more than 46 GB of free disk space?

At least the backup needs more space than you use on / because itā€™s do a copy in tmp folder, after it creates a tar.gz file and remove /tmp files. So if you have 30 giga of data in Yunohost, you need more than 30 giga of freespace on Backup space.

Are you french language native (Iā€™m), if so letā€™s continue in French maybe :slight_smile:

Thanks for your help. I will stick with English if you donā€™t mind, for the sake of consistency with the initial post (but yeah, I am French n_nā€™)!

You put me on good rails with the use of a symbolic link. I have then double-checked it and retried with, instead:

sudo ln -s /path/to/a/backup/folder/on/my/50GB/disk /home/yunohost.backup

I have also created both archives and tmp folders in /path/to/a/backup/folder/on/my/50GB/disk. Therefore even the tmp folder used is located on the large disk I am aiming to use.

It worked like that!


I believe it didnā€™t work in the first place with the --output-directory option of the yunohost backup create because it doesnā€™t account for the tmp folder which in fact grows to at least 10+ GB. Perhaps the backup script should account for both archives and tmp folders, instead of solely archives.

Merci ! :blush:

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